Hatoful Boyfriend is an interactive visual novel that follows a branching plot line, with the player's decisions determining which of the game's multiple endings they receive. The title is a pun on the wasei-eigo word hātofuru (ハートフル?, "heartful", also "hurtful"), and the Japanese word hato (鳩, "pigeon", "dove"), as the game features pigeons and other birds as major characters.

Hatoful Boyfriend is set in an alternate version of Earth in which sapient, anthropomorphic birds have seemingly taken the place of humans in society for reasons that are hinted at, but not fully explained in the dating simulation portion of the game. In Bad Boys Love, it is revealed that Hatoful is set in a post-apocalyptic, dystopian future—in which a pandemic of a deadly, mutated strain of the H5N1 virus, or bird flu, nearly wipes out mankind in the year 2068.[1]